Saturday, March 16, 2013

Amazon.com has promised to make a paid app free every day in the Amazon Appstore, and today's app is Race Rally 3D.

Race Rally 3D is priced at $4.99 in Google Play; it is normally priced at $4.99 at the Amazon Appstore. As we've noted before, there are sometimes differences in pricing and availability between the two marketplaces.

Race Rally 3D is described as follows:

The Race Rally is the best 3d arcade racing game features day or night rainy mode with lights on or off and six different camera views. Race along with other artificial intelligence (AI) cars for the desired number of laps assisted with back camera view mirror and win!

Choose from three different game modes: Race-n-Chase with AI cars, Countdown, and Timer mode with custom choice of Steering, Stick, or Motion control for wheel and throttle. You can optionally turn off engine (SFX) or music sound.

Chill out your racing experience with an option to turn on rain shower and lights. Enjoy the rally action packed ride!

Race Rally 3D has a 4.4-star rating in Google Play; it has a 2.5-star rating in the Amazon Appstore.

A review by 3n19m470 might give insight into why there is such a huge difference between the stores:

Only a very new gamer or a young child say, 10, 11 or younger, would like this game. There's nothing too wrong with it, per se... It's just very very basic.

There is also a version in the iOS App Store. There, it is priced at $3.99 and has 3.5-stars overall.

We continue to be disappointed with the FAOTD program. It began promisingly enough, with Angry Birds Rio, but we've gotten tired of the endless games or niche apps, and especially apps which have no uptake in Google Play, and seem to be FAOTD as a desperation move by the developer.

We'd like to see free versions of say, Office-compatible software or useful utilities such as CalenGoo instead of niche apps or endless games (we just assume every day that it's going to be a game; it's gotten that bad).

Amazon.com opened up the Appstore despite a lawsuit by Apple, which has previously trademarked the term "App Store." Microsoft has filed an appeal against that trademark, saying the term is too generic. Amazon.com has responded to the lawsuit in the same manner.

Apple has already lost a portion of that lawsuit, which said Amazon.com had participated in "false advertising."